High-profile hosts line Hillary Clinton's fundraising trail

By The Sunlight Foundation

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton attended a $2,700-per-person fundraiser at the home of Lynn Rothschild on Tuesday, the same day that archived emails released by the State Department showed that Rothschild may have influenced a profile of the former secretary of state.

In an email from August 2009, one of the 3,000 released on Tuesday, Rothschild told Clinton that she spent the previous day on Nantucket with Les Gelb of Parade Magazine, who had relayed his pitch for an upcoming profile of the then-secretary of state.

“He said he would give you a veto over content and looked me in the eye and said, ‘she will like it,’” Rothschild wrote.

An editor’s note was appended to the online version of the article saying that AMG/Parade, the magazine’s current owners, “does not promise favorable coverage or allow any subject control of the editorial process.” Gelb denied wrongdoing to a Politico reporter.

Rothschild was a major financial supporter of Clinton during her 2008 campaign, but resigned her position with the Democratic National Committee and backed Republican nominee John McCain after Clinton’s primary loss to President Barack Obama.

The fundraiser was just one stop on a busy fundraising tour for Clinton, as her campaign approached its first filing deadline. Fundraiser invitations obtained by the Sunlight Foundation show that Clinton has attended 10 fundraisers in the last four days, including ones hosted by fashion designer Kenneth Cole and singer Bon Jovi. The events, held in Massachusetts, New York and Washington, D.C., all request $1,000 to $2,700 to attend, the maximum that can be contributed to a candidate’s primary campaign according to federal law.

Thursday evening, Clinton is attending a fundraiser at the Massachusetts home of Elaine Schuster, a philanthropist and Democratic donor, and her husband Gerald Schuster, a real estate developer who was a major donor to President Bill Clinton and was audited by the Department of Housing and Urban Development for misappropriation of funds in 1999.

According to early reporting, Hillary for America raised $45 million in the quarter, an amount unlikely to be matched by any of her opponent’s authorized political action committees.

The Sunlight Foundation is a non-profit, nonpartisan organization that uses the power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency, and provides new tools and resources for media and citizens, alike.